The 'New Tricks’ thespians who think they write the scripts are kidding
themselves

When I read that the cast of New Tricks had succumbed to a common mental ailment – the delusion that they actually write the scripts – I wasn’t surprised. The show’s star, Amanda Redman, told the Radio Times that “we put a lot into making the scripts work”. But the scriptwriter, Julian Simpson, disagreed: actually, he clarified on Twitter in a lengthy tirade, the actors wrote “not a ----ing comma”.

Well, as any scriptwriter can tell you, there are two types of actor – good ones and bad ones. The good actors know they are nothing – nothing, do you hear me?! – without a brilliant script. The bad actors think they’re making it all up themselves.

Unfortunately, sometimes the good actors aren’t all that good, while the bad actors are often geniuses of their interpretive art. But it is in this genius that the root of the problem lurks. For what, after all, is an actor, but someone who professionally persuades him or herself that he or she is somebody else; and then persuades you, the audience, too? It’s no wonder that now and again they persuade themselves that they wrote it.

In the case of New Tricks, it seems this attack of actor-writing syndrome didn’t break out until series nine, for which the writers should be grateful.

When Laurence Marks and I created Shine on Harvey Moon, 30 years ago, we found ourselves working with actors who had decades of experience in the National Theatre, the RSC and prime-time television, and we were in awe of how this superb cast brought our scripts to life. However, we knew what we had written was good; we had great reviews and wonderful viewing figures to prove it.

So we were somewhat peeved when, during the making of series two, one cast member casually observed how they loved the way that our scripts just gave them a general steer, allowing them to flesh out the characters and do all the colouring in. It was all the producer could do to stop us presenting the cast at the next read-through with a hundred blank pages apiece, and inviting them to get on with it.

The syndrome is more prevalent in television than in the theatre. Theatrical tradition esteems the text. Modern playwrights benefit from this ingrained respect, and are aided by those who have preceded them. Harold Pinter, for example, was notoriously intolerant of any actor who messed with his plays as written. Furthermore, he believed that everything an actor needed to know about a play was already on the page. To anyone who asked about his character’s backstory or motivation, Pinter retorted, approximately: “Mind your own fuming business.”

A long-running television series has a different rhythm from a stage play. By the time season seven, eight or nine comes around, the original producers and writers have usually gone on to other projects. There will be a number of new writers and directors each year, with the only continuity coming from the stars of the show, understandably sensitive to anything in the script that doesn’t feel quite right.

Any smart director will listen to a star who points out, for example: “I don’t think I’d say 'Anybody want a drink?’, I’d say 'Anybody fancy a bevvy?’” However, that is not “rewriting the script”. The scriptwriter has had an idea for an episode. He has worked on this idea and turned it into a storyline. He has devised a subplot as a counterpoint to this storyline. He has considered how the main characters have interacted in previous episodes and woven these personal strands into a second subplot. Only then does the writer develop all this into an hour of dialogue and stage directions. It will take him anything up to two months. That is what writing a script entails. (Sorry if I started to sound a bit cross just then.)

I don’t mean that actors should not be allowed any input into the script. When Laurence and I worked with Rik Mayall on The New Statesman, we never told him how to deliver a line, and he never once told us what to write, even though he had a parallel career as a successful writer-performer. Instead Rik would look at the script and say, “I’d like three more laughs on page 17.”

We’d counter by saying, “There are already 13 laughs.” He’d say, “Actually there are 15, because I can get two more with a look. But I still want three more.” He used to wear us out, but he never drove us mad.

As a final warning to any actor who truly thinks he wrote the script, let me remind you of the fate of Dr Drake Ramoray. In case you don’t remember, in Friends, Matt le Blanc played dim-witted actor Joey Tribbiani, who in turn played soap character Dr Ramoray – until he foolishly told a gossip magazine that he made up most of his own lines. When Joey received his next script he discovered that Dr Ramoray was about to fall down a lift shaft. He should have known. The writer always has the last word.